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How the Abortion Industry Sells Abortion by Exploiting Normal Feelings

A post by Christina Dunigan at the Real Choice blog explores how the abortion industry preys on women and their families by using the normal, ambivalent feelings many women experience on learning that they are pregnant to sell abortions:

For many women, accepting (or coming to terms with) the pregnancy will usually involve a mixture of positive and negative feelings about accommodating a new person in their lives. Some women will question their readiness to start a family (will there ever be a right time?). Others may focus on their own personal issues and/or family values, as they wrestle with the whole picture of being pregnant.

…. Life-changing events (such as pregnancy) frequently involve immense emotional experiences and release (both positive and negative) and it is very normal to feel different at various times, as you go through this period of adjustment.

Thus we [see that] merely accepting the fact that she’s pregnant is something many pregnant women go through. But both prochoice writings, and “counseling” at abortion facilities as reported by women, treat this as a way to leverage abortion sales. They use statements like, “It will be as if this never happened,” and other reassurances that an abortion will make the whole situation of being pregnant simply go away.

Negative feelings are also treated as evidence that the woman will continue to reject the pregnancy, and ultimately reject the baby. [T]hey use statement[s] like, “This will enable you to have a baby when you’re ready.”

Statement like these are deceitful and hurtful for three reasons:

1. They take something normal — needing time to adjust to the idea of being pregnant, initial negative feelings — and treat it as a reason to abort. This normal stage of pregnant is treated as evidence that the woman is “not ready” to parent.

2. The push for “early abortion” produces an encouragement to rush into abortion immediately, before the woman has had adequate time to process the news. This is akin to helping a person who has just suffered a disabling injury to commit suicide during the stage of initial shock.

3. The initial and normal negative feelings about the pregnancy are treated as if they’re signs of permanent inability to be happy about the impending birth of a child.

You can read the whole post here. Indeed, the situation Dunigan describes is often compounded when the woman or girl’s loved ones also have mixed or negative feelings about the pregnancy and react in ways that are unsupportive, or even push for or insist on abortion. Pregnancy center counselors can attest to the fact that, given time to adjust to the news and sort out their emotions, unsupportive or abortion-minded parents or partners may actually change their minds and support a woman’s desire to continue the pregnancy.

Unfortunately, this is not what happens at most abortion facilities. A survey of American and Russian women who had abortions found that 64 percent of American respondents reported feeling pressured to abort by others and more than half felt uncertain or that they needed more time to make a decision. Despite these ambivalent feelings, 79 percent reported that they were not given any counseling on other options and 84 percent said they did not receive adequate counseling (67 percent reported that they received no counseling before the abortion).

After the abortion, among the same group of American women it was reported that:

65 percent experienced multiple symptoms of trauma, which they attributed to their abortions,

37 percent experienced thoughts of suicide, and

55 percent felt like “part of me died” with the abortion.

This is why preying on the emotions of vulnerable women, girls and families in order to sell an abortion is, as Dunigan puts it, an “inexcusable and cruel practice.” Women and their loved ones deserve better support and viable alternatives, not abortion.